Word: fitzgeralded
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Graves's more dignified Rubaiyyat may be an eagle to FitzGerald's sparrow. But FitzGerald's work is still in living flight, while Graves's already sits there on the shelf-stuffed...
Translators of poetry are the John Aldens of literature. They may woo the reader in another's name but, ultimately, they must speak for themselves-with translations that stand up in their own right as good poetry. "A translation must live," wrote Edward FitzGerald, "with a transfusion of one's own worse life if he can't retain the original's better. Better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle...
...FitzGerald, a mid-Victorian belletrist and amateur Orientalist, carried this principle to an extreme when he translated the 12th century Persian poem The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam. He condensed, combined and reshuffled the stanzas, dropping what did not suit him and pumping in generous transfusions of his own sentimental, post-Darwin fatalism. The result is one of the enduring minor poems of the language-awash with fanciful exoticism, vivid and resonant. But scholars have been scandalized by the liberties that FitzGerald took with the original, and for a century have tried in vain to supplant his version with more literal...
Graves is plain where FitzGerald is prettified, philosophic where FitzGerald is sententious. His austere tone evokes a more troubled, yearning Omar whose tippling is a metaphor for religious mysticism. Yet, surprisingly for a poet of his skill and grace, Graves often lapses into ungainly syntax, primly avoids rhymes, and altogether misses the colorful, melodious murmur that so entrances the ear and emotions in FitzGerald. He may be deliberately exercising his classical restraint or making an overzealous try for accuracy. In any case, he stiffens the flow of the poem. Here is one of FitzGerald's best-known quatrains...
...hard School Committeemen such as James Fitzgerald, who oppose the portable classrooms per se, may attempt to block approval of these sites. The School Committee should ignore them, and accept Harvard's offer. If there is to be a final round in the portable classrooms fight, it should be fought in the open, when the City debates the appropriation for the classrooms. The quibble over site selection is now pointlessly delaying the construction of the new Houghton School...